If the speech is for the benefit of the prayer, such as if the imam forgets to recite al-Fatihah, you tell him, "Recite al-Fatihah."

The questioner : Your Eminence, if the speech is for the benefit of the prayer, such as if the imam forgets to recite al-Fatihah, you tell him, "Recite al-Fatihah." And if he forgets to bow and prostrates, and he is told, "Subhan Allah," but he does not understand his mistake, so he is told, "Why did you not bow?" Does that invalidate the prayer?

The Shaykh : Yes, speech invalidates the prayer, and I mean by speech the speech of human beings. The evidence for this is the story of Mu'awiyah ibn al-Hakam (may Allah be pleased with him) when he came and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was praying with his Companions. A man from the people sneezed, and one of the people said, "Alhamdulillah." Who said it? The one who sneezed said, "Alhamdulillah," because when a person sneezes, he should praise Allah, even in prayer. He said, "Alhamdulillah." Then Mu'awiyah said, "May Allah have mercy on you," because it is prescribed for the one who hears the sneezer praise Allah to say, "May Allah have mercy on you." The people threw their glances at him, meaning they looked at him with their eyes. He said, "Wathakal ummih," which is what Mu'awiyah said. Mu'awiyah, the sneezer praised Allah and was silent, so they began hitting their thighs to silence him, and he was silent. When he finished his prayer, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) called him. Mu'awiyah said: or as the witness said. The statement of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): This is general. Is "something" an indefinite noun in a context? Oh, my brothers, nothing is permissible in it. An indefinite noun in a context of negation implies generality, meaning nothing of the speech of people is permissible in it, whether for the benefit of the prayer or for other than the benefit of the prayer. And based on this, it is not permissible for us to alert the imam with any speech. If he prostrates and we say "Subhan Allah" in a place other than prostration, and he stands and we say "Subhan Allah" because it is not a place for standing, because it is a place for sitting, so he prostrated in a place of sitting, so we said "Subhan Allah," and he stood. So he stood from sitting. Some people say, "Should I not speak and say 'Sit'?" What do we say? We say, "Do not speak, do not say 'Sit,' because if you say 'Sit,' you have spoken to a human being, and your prayer is invalidated. So what do we do? We say the tasbih. I fear that it will be like the one who said the tasbih and stood, and said the tasbih and sat, and said the tasbih and lay down. But if one of the congregation says, "Sit," speaking, thinking that speech in this state is permissible, do we say to him, "You must repeat the prayer?" No, because the one who speaks in prayer while ignorant does not have to repeat it. And for this reason, the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not order Mu'awiyah to repeat it, even though he spoke twice: once he said to the sneezer, "May Allah have mercy on you," and once he said, "Wathakal ummih," and he did not order him to repeat it. But there is a question: if the imam in a prayer where the recitation is loud forgets to recite loudly, and we say to him, "Subhan Allah," and he does not understand, how do we alert him?

The questioner : We recite loudly.

The Shaykh : Yes, we recite loudly. That is sufficient. It is easy. One of us raises his voice with the recitation of al-Fatihah, and the imam notices. We can alert him with a verse, so we recite: and perhaps he will notice.